So, I’ve been asked to take over Mezdurad for a year as overseer.
Just coming up to the gates, or rather lack thereof is making me doubt this was a good idea.
Let’s tour the place.
From a distance the fort looks like a very big truncated pyramid, with two steps of unequal size. It’s gentle slope make it ideal for goblins to walk up and rain arrows into the courtyard below. Not that they need to get this fancy as the whole place is open to the four winds with no moat or drawbridge.
There’s an attempt at fortifying the first step of the semi-pyramid but it’s unfinished and there’s funeral slabs in the way
There’s a view of the entrance
That road will need tearing up and be replaced by a proper drawbridge, also there’s a chained dog that’s probably in the way of wagons a bit to the north, A few weapon traps wouldn’t hurt also.
Seems they really like pyramids here. At least above ground. One is even made out of green glass. And serves as a combo cow pasture, chicken coop and has a tomb in the attic.
Sigh, moving on, I’ll gloss over the mismanaged above ground fields, oversized block stockpile, boneyard pyramid and massive wooden deck and ominously unlabelled but obviously linked lever. Let’s go downstairs,Past the underground pastures there’s an… Overgrown dirt chapel? No, it’s the farmer’s guild’s hall.
I’ll profit from passing by some farms to straighten their schedules a bit. See it may be fine to have a farm switch crops mid year but it doesn’t take into account when the dwarves slack on a harvest or don’t plant right at season start. So it’s better practice to dedicate a field to a crop.
Continuing downward I see something else that needs straightening,
This abomination of an aquifer punchthrough, water can leak through corners you know. It needs to be dug out and filled meticulously with constructed walls, starting from the outer corners.
I’ve ordered it done so, we’ll have to come back to it later.
One thing is clear, this fortress needs more doors, I’ll set up work orders so that it never runs out of doors.
Should do the trick
Now the workshops and quarry area I have nothing to complain about, not my chosen way of doing things but it’s okay. It’d be nice to clean up the boulders though.
The living quarters remind me of something I read once, about a concept called “death of the object”, very dystopian. I don’t like looking at it too long.
That very big bedroom to the north is a mess though, because it has no cabinets to store clothes in it looks like a rat’s nest. I’ll fix that while I’m touring.
There, should do it.
Going down I arrive at the forges’ level, this place needs some love as well.
First let’s streamline steel production with work orders.
We’ll start from the top
This should ensure a good supply of steel bars.
Next step is pig iron, we’ll need a supply of that as well.
Like so. This way we have good safety margins for all those ressources.Then we need to take care of iron itself.
Looks like we have ample amounts of iron ore :
So we’ll set up a work order for it to be refined automatically,
And finally we do the same for the coal supply, I think we’re swimming in the stuff but it’ll pay later to have the turning of raw coal into refined coke taken care of.
With a bit of reorganizing, we now have a set of orders that should ensure there’s always at least fifty steel bars available for weapon or armorsmithing. The amount can be then further tweaked by future overseers for projects.
Also, I’ve noticed we’re swimming not only in coke and coal, but also in kaolinite. Kaolinite is used to make porcelain if memory serves. It could be a good idea to set up an industry of that in the fortress, could even make some statues or even build whole buildings.
Actually it’d fit nicely Into something I’ve noticed is lacking in Threebeard fortress : Proper waterworks.
We’ll come back to that later.
First order of business building wise is to give the entrance a proper drawbridge,
As soon as this is ordered however I’m notified something happened.
This happened on the 1st of Granite, no idea why she just dropped dead on the workshops level.
Oh well, we have plenty of empty tombs.
Also while looking at a rather haggard individual I noticed Erush Dumatsoloz a surgeon had multiple infected wounds.
We don’t have any soap. I should check if we have a hospital at all and remedy this.
No iron ore? Ah I see, it’s all down there in the caverns and there’s no safe path to reach it.
What a pain. Guess I’ll have to make one or at least securize an existing one.
Honestly who just digs in the caverns happy go lucky like that? You need to have safe tunnels that don’t communicate directly with the caverns if you want to go and mine down there.
I’ll have to deal with that later if I can, for now the dwarves are busy with plugging the constant dripping from the aquifer on level -1,
On the 7th of Granite, things are progressing but somebody was in a mood and succumbed to madness it seems.
Oh well.
On the 8th the leak has been plugged and is almost finished
See, no more leak.
Ah, I’m getting petitioned by somebody. They want to reside here. Not sure I want another outsider , they’re probably after our precious artifacts. There’s enough of them around already.
Go away.
Now that security improvements are underway I can take a look at our healthcare.
That’s our hospital?
I mean it’s better than nothing but it’s certainly not up to code.
Guess I’ll need to design a new and better one
I think it’s going to go near the forges once I’ve fixed the central stairs leading to it.
Oh, it seems we have a guest.
This is where the report says the beast has been sighted. Mm that’s a lot of bat people, I guess they’ll just kill each other then.
So as I was saying, we’re fixing the central stairs to make going places easier.
The new hospital is going to go on this level as there’s plenty of space available here and since it’s somewhat underneath the bulk of the fort, it’ll be easy to integrate the future waterworks and link a cistern so the hospital has its own well.
There is the new hospital laid out. A central area that is meant to include a well and storage chests for supplies.
Each room will include a bed, table for surgery and traction bench for easy reach of the patient. It also means patients can be isolated if need be.
So I was supervising the new hospital’s construction when on the 17th of Granite I got the urgent report :
Elven ambush, curse them. I’ll send the military but I’m pretty sure it’s in a poor state right now.
The bridge has just been built but not linked to a lever yet.
It’ll have to do.
Showdown is about to happen.
Melee is joined
No idea how it’s going but there’s a lot of them pointy ears bastards
Seems like we managed to rout them but lost at least five of our own doing so, probably more are wounded. This was an attack of at least 6 ambush groups worth, no idea on the exact count but the battlefield is littered with the teeth of the dead.
At least we made it to Slate now. Ah and we lost a woodcutter to a falling tree.
The hospital is on its way to being smoothed up and the bridge has been linked up to a lever in an easy to reach area near the central staircase.
I’ve also noticed we don’t have a proper dining hall? Really?
Well anyways, the next item is to secure the mines so I’ll solve that if I have time during my tenure.
Guess I’ll have to chance walling up mine sections under military supervision. To prepare for that I order that some of our existing steel supplies be used for some arms and armor. I ordered some backpack and waterskins to be made as well to help our two squads with extended deployments.
Compared to Granite, Slate has been a very uneventful month. We’ve found a bit of accessible iron ore that is safe to mine and will help us bolster steel production for a while. The hospital is taking quite a while to smooth.
In preparation for retaking the mines I’ve been ordering trash copper and elven weapons to be made into a trap hallway that’ll help in case gribblies from below decide to swarm up from the tunnels.
At any rate, Felsite has been mostly as uneventful as Slate was. Projects are proceeding at a leisurely pace and we’ve secured a bit more iron. With only two forges, weapon production is quite slow, and so is weapon traps construction.
Soap making is also underway, we don’t need much of it but it needs to be a steady supply though so work orders have been drafted to take care of that.
Around the 20th though we get knowledge of a new horror lurking in the depths :
Hopefully it’ll get to know the resident bat people.
One bit of good news though :
While nothing exceptional, artifact buildings have many uses for those who know how to unlock their true potential.
For example they are perfect bait to lure creatures that like to destroy buildings into a clever trap.
But enough of that, time passes and spring becomes summer in Mezdurad.
Since we’re going to need soap, that requires either oil or tallow, thus we’ll need jugs to contain oil from pressing rock nuts.
This ties in nicely with our need to do something with all that kaolinite lying around. Thus four new kilns will be built near the main bar stockpile where the coke is stored and an adjoining kaolinite stockpile nearby.
A bit later during the month, human traders arrive but they only bring produce we already have in quantity, only plants and meat, so trade will be skipped this year. However a small gift of prepared meals will be given to them so they didn’t come here for nothing and hopefully bring a more sizable caravan next year.
Apart from that nothing of real note appeared this Hematite, a ghost will need to be appeased, we lost a couple humans to depression. Naked mole dogs keep dying for no reason and production of ordered items proceeds at a glacial pace.
I’ve unspecialized hauling for the time being as well, it seems to have helped somewhat with the workflow but we’ll see.
Of most concern to me is the very slow output of our smithies, my instincts tell me the complicated work details are to blame for it but I don’t dare touch it too much. I wish the one smithy I ordered constructed would get some attention but alas nobody seems to be interested in hauling our one anvil there, or making the four more I’ve ordered.
Oh well.
On the other hand the new hospital is nearly done. I doubt I’ll be able to put in a proper well for it with the original method I was thinking about. I’ll have to tap an aquifer and somehow fit a cistern for it but the terrain configuration and cavern geometry will make that tricky. Also since forging goes so very slowly, it means I won’t be able to put in the traction benches I wanted in a hurry. I guess instead of chains I’ll make yarn rope from shearing animals, we’ll see.
At least steel production has been in full swing.
23rd of Malachite
, I’ve decided we’ve waited enough to reclaim the mines, let’s breach the topmost tunnel and hope the military and few weapon traps already in place will do the job until it can be properly sealed from the cavern.
Let’s hope this goes well.
Here goes nothing, we need to quickly build a wall to seal that tunnel.
And of course there had to be some idiot who rushed to rush into the cavern to get that all important copper spear or whatever and attract the entire bat people swarm onto them
A quick burrow order will prevent further casualties hopefully. But in the meantime we have some wounded in the military. Time to call the other squad to the rescue and deal with those vermin.
The problem lies in the fact I can’t find the specific piece of unforbidden gear all those military dwarfs are rushing past the bat people to grab, resulting in quite a few stupid deaths.
It’s all because somebody in the past decided it was a good idea to claim the corpses and equipment of the fallen as a standard policy. There’s a good reason to prevent dwarves from doing that by default : If they’re dead, there’s a good chance the thing that killed them is still around.
I forbid most of the cavern but this is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Not that our losses were one sided mind you :
We made a sizable dent in their population.
The battle for the mines continued until just before half of Galena and settled to a simmer, our military is quite exhausted and wounded and has retreated to refresh themselves. There’s only two bat people near that tunnel remaining and they don’t seem too eager to bring the fight to us. With a bit of luck we should be able to claim our dead and most of our equipment back for minimal confrontation.
Then we’ll need to be very very generous to the dwarven traders so that word of our wealth reaches the mountain homes, bringing fresh migrants to replenish our population.
For now though, we need time to rest, recuperate and re-equip the replacement recruits before we open the caverns again, a simple door should do the trick for just now, it will enable us to lift the burrow restrictions for a month or so. Hopefully no building destroyers will happen upon us in the meantime
Except we ran into a bit of trouble, see apparently until now the dwarves were told it was okay to immediately go and claim the dead and their belongings from the battlefield. This resulted in a lot of gear just laying around the caverns unforbidden.
A slow conga line of military members would then one at a time decide this copper spear sitting amidst the horde of bat people at the other end of the cavern was the one they just needed to have above all else.
Three or four more casualties later I finally managed to forbid the entirety of everything lying down there. This should put a stop to this nonsense.
Now we just need to grab what’s near the secured tunnel and close it for good.
Summer ends and autumn comes; the war against the bat people continues.
More deaths on both sides, but there’s way less of them now, our might prevails.
With autumn comes trade and diplomacy. While we continue to stand watch in the depths, the outside world comes to us.
Surely nothing bad will come of this, right?
Also given the situation in the mines has lasted too long and resulted in too many casualties I decide it’s time to seal them back up again.
Not the resounding success I had hoped for but we have secured a decent amount of ores that will go a long way towards equipping future soldiers so that it’ll be easier to take more tunnels in the future.
In the depths beneath, another beast lurks.
They should be too deep to reach us but we must remain vigilant nonetheless until the recently reclaimed tunnel is properly walled up.
Eh, we’re a duchy now.
Safe.
Tunnel is officially walled up. Not too soon.
Trade is nothing to write home about as no wagon came, the traders brought some bars and a few finished goods. We’ll trade a bit of our splendid prepared food for their metal bars and an anvil while giving them a generous profit.
Then we’ll gift them about fifty thousand worth of gourmet dishes as a gift to the mountain homes. Hopefully my successor will receive many migrants to replenish our battle losses.
Sandstone comes, the new hospital replaces the old one, it’s not as complete as I would like but it should still work better than the old.
Right now what we need to do is catch up on hauling and equipment crafting.
We focus on that during the rest of the month and the stockpiles storing and crafting pick up pace.
Other than that, the month was mostly peaceful.
A violent fist fight erupted in the central staircase in Timber, the new hospital has been put to work.
Things were going ok until early winter when I noticed two camels getting names for killing our dogs. They have elected to live inside our inner fort and are an incident waiting to happen.
Let’s send the militia after them.
The offenders in question, one has been named Snunesmên or “Obscurewind” by the dwarves, and the other one is Kedrur or “Feedrun”. Peculiar names indeed.
As you can notice we now have steel mail for most if not all our fighters.
While not as good as hard shaped armor like breastplates and greaves, it is considerably lighter and since it’s made of steel, it should deflect most cutting and piercing hits from inflicting grievous wounds on our fighters.
Now We’ll wait a bit and send the dwarves to kill the camels.
The dwarves will be chasing that camel until they can corner it.
Queue Benny Hill’s theme.
It is good exercise.
Now if you could just use your spear, Sakzul, that would be even better.
We continue chasing them around the fort for a while without success, until we at least manage to drive them outside. At least there’s that.
Time continues to pass slowly albeit peacefully in Mezdurad as we reach Opal, midwinter.
We do get an artifact armor stand made of bituminous coal. It looks quite valuable so I’m sure one of my successors will make something of it some day.
We’re still in the process of imposing some form of order into the chaotic mess of the fortress.
Big stockpiles are designated to store scattered items and boulders where we have space, it’ll take time for the dwarves to bring each thing to its proper place.
As my tenure reaches its end I have recommendations for future overseers:
- -Finish up the hospital, it needs a few more traction benches and eventually a well.
- -Waterworks for traps, hygiene and mist generators. Don’t hesitate to make porcelain blocks for that bathroom feel.
- -Expand and reorganize the militia, we have mangled squads due to earlier ill fated expeditions, get rid of them, construct an archery field and get us some crossbow dwarves. (Or more footsoldiers, that’s fine too)
- -Reclaiming more of the mines should be easier now that we have two squads fully kitted.
- -Try and make dwarves happier so they stop tantruming so much. A generic temple to all deities could help them.
- -Proper dining room
- -Keep tidying up the fort.
So that’s all folks, I’ll leave Threebeards to the next guy.
END OF YEAR 113
